"now you know what it's like to live in fear"

Greetings, let's get the introductions out of the way...

I'm Lorien, and I'm a runner, a lawyer, and I have breast cancer.

April, 2006:
On or about April 25, 2006, I went to the doctor because I hadn't been feeling good. I was training for a half marathon and wanted to be in good shape for it. The Dr. found a lump in my breast and sent me for a mammogram and ultrasound.

May, 2006:
May 1, 2006, I went to a breast surgeon, who did a needle biopsy of the lump.
May 5, 2006, I was diagnosed with breast cancer: Stage IIb Grade 3.
I decide to have a bilateral mastectomy, even though the cancer is in only one breast.

"NOW you know what it's like to live in fear" -- Bladerunner.

May 8, 2006, I meet with a plastic surgeon, and decide to have simultaneous reconstruction, with implants, which means that they put "expanders" in at the same time as the mastectomy. So you go to surgery a 45 year old and come out a 12 year old (boob wise anyway...!)

May 19, 2006: the big day. I haven't eaten or drunk anything since midnight the night before. I am thirsty and starved. Gareth and I arrive at the hospital at 10:30 a.m. I am almost ridiculously cheery, determined to erase the tombstones from everyone's eyes when they look at me. A nurse asks me if I'm nervous and I say NO. She says, "I can tell you are, here's a valium." Ok well I'm not going to turn down the valium.

I go into NUCLEAR medicine (or, nucular, as some who shall remain nameless, would have it), and get radioactive. I mean they pumped some radioactive dye into my breast/armpit to highlight the lymph nodes. I am told that then the surgeon can use a geiger counter to tell where to cut. COOL! I love modern medicine!

Then, back to the waiting room, where both surgeons come and talk to me, the plastic surgeon draws on me (very tribal looking), and the anesthesiologist comes in and asks me questions. All are very matter of fact. I am high as a kite. I am very "let's do this thing, folks!" ah drugs. gotta love 'em.

THEN i walk into the OR. The OR. my goodness. It is big and there are lots of metal things and people with masks over their faces. There are lots of shiny, SHARP things. I lie down on a very narrow, paper covered bed.
and: low and behold, Frank Sinatra starts to croon from an unseen sound system. It is too surreal. The anesthiologist bends over me, we exchange some joke about Frankie, and BAM!

***
I am shivering uncontrollably and it really hurts to breathe in because there is like an iron band around my chest. I am saying "I can't stop shivering". People are running around saying "we'll give you something to stop that, we'll give you something for that". This goes on for a while.
Then Gareth is there and I ask him if polar bears have tails. I am very thirsty and am given ice chips.

Soon, I realize I'm in "recovery", and I've lost 4 hours in the OR. I ask to waddle to the bathroom and am allowed to. I seem to be ok, except that my chest feels majorly tight.

I am wheeled into my room, where Gareth waits. Nice room! private, with my own bathroom and a window and phone.

***

I spend 2 nights in the hospital, where I am visited by the Ex, a/k/a Fred, who brings many cool gifts, and freaks out the nurses by putting a sign on my door that says "Psycho."
Gareth comes later and we watch movies.
On May 21, 2006, I go home.

***

On May 30, 2006, I go back to work.
May 31, 2006, surgery pathology report is in. It's a lot better than we thought. Out of 19 nodes, i have 3 positive. Now that's not great, but it isn't bad, and I thought it would be worse. I'm also herceptin positive, which means I can benefit from herceptin treatment as well as chemo. But, I am estrogen/progesterone negative, which means that hormone treatment won't do me any good. So the news is mixed.

During the 2 weeks after my surgery, I've been mostly ok, but I've had some fluid build up in my left breast (the one that had the cancer). At first this freaked me out, but I did some research, and found that it is just a seroma, which is a non-serious complication from mastectomy.
I've had to have it drained by my plastic surgeon 3 times so far, the first time was not so much, the second time was about 400ml, and the last time not so much. From what I read, and from what my PS told me, I'll probably have to get it drained every so often for the next 2 weeks. It's not a big deal, but disconcerting to suddenly have a boob where there was only a preadolescent bump before!

This makes us roughly current.

At first, on bloggrrilla, my main blog, I wasn't talking at all about the cancer. I just didn't want to put it in writing, because that interfered with my almost legendary capacity for denial. But I finally came out of the closet on bloggrilla, and since then have wondered whether to let the cancer fight take over bloggrilla, or whether to keep my first blog relatively cancer free, because I can ALWAYS find other stuff to blog about. This blog is my solution. Here, it's all cancer, all of the time! Heh. well not really, but this will probably detail the treatments and stuff, and my reactions to them. This helps me, and, I hope, will help anyone who happens on this blog, who is facing the same things.

Ok, time to eat now. I gotta enjoy food while I can, I hear chemo makes stuff taste weird. Too bad, because I really like to eat..